Fired Up!
The age of romance is dead in Will Gluck's buddy comedy about two high school football stars, who hit upon a novel way to seduce female classmates: join the cheerleading squad.
The age of romance is dead in Will Gluck's buddy comedy about two high school football stars, who hit upon a novel way to seduce female classmates: join the cheerleading squad.
It's a classic tale of boys meet girls, boys sleep with girls, boys move onto the next girls, sleep with them too, then the next, until they have bedded the entire student population.
Fired Up! rejoices in the unabashed sluttiness of its gym-toned protagonists, who can talk the bikini off anything with a pulse.
No woman is safe from these sun-kissed lotharios - or rather the two-dimensional, brainless imitations of womankind who clutter up Gluck's film in their tight shorts and skimpy vests.
While the female of the species in Freedom Jones' script lacks personality, the gay characters are limp-wristed stereotypes, who whoop, 'I love the smell of pompoms in the morning!' The best lines are repeated verbatim from the brilliant Kirsten Dunst comedy Bring It On, which is the feature presentation at a late-night screening at cheer camp.
The characters in Gluck's film stare spellbound at the flickering big screen, reciting Dunst's pithy dialogue en masse, as if it were a mantra for life.
We're suddenly reminded how depressingly poor an imitation this is.
Best friends Shawn (Nicholas D'Agosto) and Nick (Eric Christian Olsen) are the star athletes at Gerald R.
Ford High School and have exploited their demi-god status to bed most of the girls.
With the help of Shawn's sister Poppy (Juliette Goglia), the pals join the less than impressive Tigers cheerleading squad captained by Carly (Sarah Roemer), one of the few girls to rebuff their barrage of compliments.
At cheerleading camp, the lads quickly get to work and are swamped with offers.
However, Shawn has a crush on Carly, who has an obnoxious boyfriend called Dr Rick (David Walton), and Nick hankers for Diora (Molly Sims), the wife of the head coach Keith (John Michael Higgins).
'Dude, she's like 30-years-old and married!' protests Shawn.
'That's how I like them,' grins Nick mischievously, 'ancient and regretful.' Fired Up! navigates a well-worn path from Shawn and Nick mocking their fellow cheerleaders to becoming linchpins of a revitalised Tigers squad as it attempts to perform the precarious Fountain Of Troy configuration.
En route, there are predictable scrapes like the lads losing their clothes during a skinny dip and running back naked to the dorms, and both buffoons get the girls by the end credits, which are peppered with desperately unfunny out-takes.
D'Agosto and Olsen seem to be enjoying themselves but without a decent script, their boyish banter has no spark and Roemer is insipid.
During his welcome speech, Coach Keith rallies his eager, young charges with the cry 'F U! F U!' which apparently stands for 'Fired Up!' If anyone in the audience of Gluck's film screams 'F U!', it will be for all the wrong reasons.
Release Date: Friday 10 July 2009
Certificate: 12A
Runtime: 89mins
